Modernism implies a break from the tradition.It refers to some sort of discontinuity, treating characters as 'thinking' individuals, emphasizing the unconscious rather than the outer, visible self; plot is more of a collection of incidents and their effect on the individual than the advance towards crisis and its resolution; imagination and internal thought processes form the substance of the literary work characterised as 'modern'. Mrs.Dalloway is a modern novel which embodies the vision that Virginia Woolf sets out in her essay, 'Modern Novels', and conforms to that ideal in almost every respect, that
...if one were free and could set down what one chose, there would be no plot, little probability, and a vague general confusion in which the clear-cut features of the tragic, the comic, the passionate, and the lyrical were dissolved beyond the possibility of separate recognition? The mind, exposed to the ordinary course of life, receives upon its surface a myriad impressions--trivial, fantastic, evanescent, or engraved with the sharpness of steel...suggesting that the proper stuff for fiction is a little other than custom would have us believe it.
Clarissa Dalloway is throwing a party. Her thoughts, remembrances, and impressions, along with the thoughts of other characters, form the 'action' of the novel. Confined to a single day in London, this is a modern novel for it has no action in the traditional sense- of building up a crisis and its resolution, of intermingling of various plots and sub-plots, just a presentation of two-three narrative threads progressing though the passage of a single day; it has an open form, the ending being inconclusive; no linearity of the story, characters feeling, experiencing and thinking, rather than acting. The sense of action is provided by the passage of time, heralded by clocks chiming and BigBen striking, towards the actual party, as well as the build-up to and the suicide committed by Septimus. The action is internalised in the thoughts and impressions received by the characters. Unlike the traditional works, this novel has also no story to tell. It is a coherent collection of 'myriad impressions', all brought together by Woolf to have her say about what she thinks about all these things through the medium of her characters, though they appear alive and thinking in their own rights. There is also no conclusive ending to the novel. The ending is such that it could be taken as a beginning to another such collection of thoughts. 'What is this terror? what is this ecstasy? he thought to himself. What is it that fills me with extraordinary excitement?
It is Clarissa, he said.
For there she was.'
Each character is revealed not by actual description by the author as used to be the case before, but by giving voice to thoughts of that character as well as what others think of him or her. Clarissa becomes a physical presence in her own words, 'she had a narrow pea-stick figure; a ridiculous little face, beaked like a bird's'. Her nature is revealed in her own thoughts, 'loved success; hated discomfort; must be liked; talked oceans of nonsense', 'not for a moment did she believe in God', and again 'people should look pleased as she came in...Much rather would she have been one of those people like Richard who did things for themselves, whereas...half the time she did things not simply, not for themselves; but to make people think this or that'. Peter reveals another aspect of her character, 'her courage; her social instinct...her power of carrying things through...her spirit, her adventurousness', 'her only gift was knowing people almost by instinct'. Sally calls her a snob.
Similarly, Peter is 'Exactly the same, thought Clarissa; the same queer look; the same check suit; a little out of the straight his face is, a little thinner, dryer, perhaps, but he looks awfully well, and just the same', 'always opening and shutting a knife when he got excited'. Sally finds him, 'an oddity, a sort of sprite, not at all an ordinary man'.'He was rather shrivelled-looking, but kinder' but has retained 'his old trick, opening a pocket-knife, thought Sally, always opening and shutting a knife when he got excited'.
Septimus is 'pale-faced, beak-nosed...with hazel eyes which had that look of apprehension in them which makes complete strangers apprehensive too'. His wife Lucrezia finds him 'so gentle; so serious; so clever'. Each character is thus revealed from various view-points and the reader is free to conclude about that characters from these varied thoughts. This appears a more dynamic mode of character presentation, and gives the reader the satisfation of being involved with that individual and not a mere spectator.
Instead of narrating the story as was being until the beginning of 20th century, Woolf makes use of the stream of consciousness technique in the novel, to unfold her characters. The technique involves recording the thought processes as they arise in the mind of the various individuals, without any apparent connecting links. This technique is seen as being more close to the real individual than the traditional one, for the latter appears to form a character from outside, only superficially, while the former delineates a living, 'thinking' individual, apparently evolving as the novel progresses. In MrsDalloway, there is seemingly no coherence in the thoughts of a character, flipping from one thing to the next without any linkages, as in the beginning, 'For Lucy had her work cut out for her. The doors would be taken off their hinges; Rumpelmayer's men were coming. And then, thought Clarissa Dalloway, what a morning-fresh as if issued to children on a beach'. The speaking voice also changes from person to person, ''That's an E,' said MrsBletchley-or a dancer-'
'It's toffee,' murmured MrBowley' However the shifts are so subtle that no apparent discontinuity is felt.
In Mrs Dalloway, the treatment of characters and incidents is essentially psychological in nature. Though the basic aim of all literature is to arrive at an understanding of an individual, traditionally, not much psychological study was being done. With the advancement of psychology as an independent field, and development of various theories, the writers were also influenced by those theories. More and more authors like Virginia Woolf started using those techniques in their works. In this novel too, each character is seen as a result of various experiences that he or she went through. Clarissa's rejection of Peter's proposal of marriage has influenced all his later thoughts and actions. The effect of war experiences on a sensitive mind are explored through the character of Septimus. The details concerning the tortured feelings of Septimus, the reasons behind his present mental state, his delusions and his reactions to everyday incidents, as well as his mistrust and abhorrence of the doctors, Clarissa's thoughts and mental reactions, Peter's life as seen though his thoughts and those of others, are vividly presented, and explained with subtle explanations about causes and counter-causes.
It can be emphatically concluded from the above discussion that Virginia Woolf succeeds in creating a modern novel, having most of the characteristics of modernism.
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